albeit just for now:

Pacha got raided

http://uk.reuters.co...K13330120080920

Uggh--the more crackdowns, the more people will go underground, the more chances there are for people to get hurt.

This shouldn't be a difficult concept to understand.

Ooh, Mitzi, I do love your sig. r o t f l

no great loss.

Damn! One club after another! Maybe you guys should get a government bailout just like our U.S. government for our insurance companies.

After the Pacha fiasco with the Chems set being cut short in S. America a few years ago - the word "Pacha" is sort of synonymous with "poor organization" for me.

Then again, it's not like Pacha controlled the weather. Anyway...

It's a bummer nontheless when a club closes its doors for one reason or another. Pooter is right - when the doors close it means people are on the streets and in uncontrolled settings where they can get hurt.

sigh..

Don't be sad, Den_B! There are still so many good times to be had! :)

All they found was 100 pills and a few wraps? Why bother?

To make it appear as though law enforcement is "tough on crime" and that they are succeeding, thereby warranted the budget which is allotted from taxpayer money to finance the investigations and administrative processes which lead to the raid, not to mention the raid itself.

Any other silly questions?

such a shame, what a great club!

my impression is that the cops are trying to crack down on the crime problems which have escalated in the UK over the years by hitting the big clubs. I would think that if anything the big clubs would be the least of the problems. I would be more concerned with the dodgy clubs that can only hold a few hundred people that are gang affiliated. But then who knows what type of corruption is happening between authorities and gangs there.

It is kinda sad that the well known clubs are shutting down and the scene is on a decline. I'm sure other clubs will come to replace them. In that time though, the scene has to pave a new way.

Good point.

I think they should legalize MDMA because it's definitely a more useful drug than alcohol.

Legalization of drugs such as MDMA would cut down or completely eliminate rogue ecstasy (cut with DXM and god knows what else), which is the stuff that actually kills people.

The media and cops just like to report it as MDMA.

But perhaps this is all just a front, anyway. An excuse to shut down a club. In the 1990's there was a club here in Irvine (S. California) called Metropolis. It was such an awesome club, had the coolest bar, good soundsystem, they had their techno nights and industrial nights, and it was real close - like walking distance - to University C. Irvine and student housing so business was good. It gave the students something fun to do on a Friday or Saturday night. Irvine is a city known for its neatly manicured streets, tract homes and distinguished schools - not for its bustling night life. So Metropolis, even though it was unassumingly located in a shopping center, was kind of a novelty. Even though there was never any notable trouble caused by the club, I believe the city and law enforcement felt Metropolis was more or less a wart on the smooth backside of civilized Irvine society. The owner was busted for having less than 5 hits of ecstasy on him (I think he had 3 hits), and he was charged with intent to sell and forced to close the club. Our local rag ran a story about it some years later and to this day I think the authorities and city officials were looking for any excuse to shut the place down.

Could be the same with Pacha, but who knows if we'll ever know.

For fun, drug statistics:

http://thedea.org/statistics.html

The death rate for MDMA, assuming that there really were about 60 deaths directly caused by MDMA in 2000, would be roughly 2 in 100,000 users. The death rate from smoking, by contrast, is on the order of 400 per 100,000 users. Even alcohol, America's official "it's not really a drug" drug, nets about 50 deaths per 100,000 users each year.

I was being sarcastic, Poots. I've entered clubs with more MDMA before though.